eternally chaotic

A special treat this weekend.  Stone Mountain Park was hosting the 10th annual Indian Festival and Pow-Wow.  An interesting assortment of Indian cultures and traditions.  Right inside the gate we walked into a show getting ready to start called “East vs. West”.  Two Indians, one from the eastern tribes and one from the western Sioux tribes, compared and contrasted the lifestyles and traditions of their ancestors.  Seems the eastern Indians were more civilized, happy to barter and trade to make life easier, while the western ones, the Sioux in particular, raided and pillaged to get what they wanted, or to advance their lifestyle.  I am sure this is a gross over exaggeration about the differences but it was neat to hear what they had to say and see the difference in the everyday tools used by each.

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Halloween has come and gone.  The loot has been categorized into various zip lock bags and put into deep freeze for behavior based distribution.  The kids had a month of various Halloween activities: Netflix provided movies, Carol provided the arts and crafts and I provided labor for scooping out pumpkin guts.  Costume selection happened about a month ago and the kids are already planning what they want to be for next year.  The costumes were fun.  Jacob was Ninja, Isaac was a Special Ops Soldier, Piper was Silvermist and Violet was Ariel.  The all looked great and the got to pick their own costumes – thank you Internet Gods for not making us drive all over creation looking for the perfect costume.

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Fall is here…although sometimes I think fall actually skips the southeast and winter tries desperately to blow in early, dragging wind and rain with it.  Such was this particular day.  With winter…fall, comes the annual Dahlonega Gold Rush festival.  This was a new festival for the girls and I.  We have been to the Duluth Fall Festival and the Norcross Art Festival but hadn’t ventured out much beyond.  It was fun from the beginning and much, much larger than the others – not to mention more organized.  There were certainly some planned destinations as well.  Carol and Bonnie wanted to eat lunch at the “Smith House“, watch the parade on Main Street, and checkout the goodies offered by the hundreds of vendors.

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